"How do we know what we know about what we know?"   Visionary Talk

03/11/05: 9:00 AM, webcast
11th Floor Small and Large Conference Rooms
Host: Patrick Pantel, schedule

Abstract: AI has traditionally thought of mental competence as deriving from internally represented knowledge, and has devoted great effort towards providing notations, methodologies and semantic theories for such representations. This representationalit assumption has often been attached, but seems to be surviving. This talk will revisit some of the basic assumptions of representationalist AI and critique them from an empirical perspective, focusing on the question: what kind of empirical test could we use to tell if our representations are right or wrong? Along the way we will touch on a number of topics, including the notorious frame problem, some rival ontologies for time and change, the evolution of consciousness, the fact that it requires a graduate education to be worried by paradoxes, and the semantic web. The talk has no technical conclusion, but makes some tentative suggestions for future research.

About Pat Hayes: Pat Hayes received a BA in mathematics from Cambridge University and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh. He has held academic positions in computer science at the University of Essex (England), in philosophy at the University of Illinois and as the Luce Professor of cognitive science at the University of Rochester. He has been a visiting scholar at Universite de Geneve and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Studies at Stanford, and has directed applied AI research at Xerox-PARC, SRI and Schlumberger, Inc.. At various times, Pat has been secretary of AISB, chairman and trustee of IJCAI, associate editor of Artificial Intelligence, a governor of the Cognitive Science Society and president of AAAI. Pat's current reseach interests include knowledge representation and automatic reasoning, especially the representation of space and time; the semantic web; ontology design; and the philosophical foundations of AI and computer science. He also restores antique mechanical clocks, remodels old houses, draws portraits and enjoys arguing with anyone about almost anything. Pat is a charter Fellow of AAAI and of the Cognitive Science Society, and has professional competence in domestic plumbing, carpentry and electrical work.

Last updated: Mon Jun 19 17:44:06 2006